Nov 30, 2010

Remember The Girl Effect, a video I posted in September? American writer Melani Ward has written her own post regarding the campaign, suggesting measures each of us could undertake to promote women's education. It's called "What Happens When We Educate Girls".

Californian textile expert Catherine Bayar, too, has picked up the video in an inspriring post entitled "The Girl Effect Hits Home". Catherine married into a Kurdish family and has become a resident of Istanbul's Old City, where she holds workshops supporting local Turkish handcraft. Writes Catherine:

"I know that (...) education starts with the women of the family, so they can teach their children, boys and girls, how to behave as decent human beings.

(...) If my large family of uneducated women were having a tough time making ends meet in the sleepy town of Selcuk, what must life be like for similar women who had moved to sprawling Istanbul?"

Nov 28, 2010

Pia of UR-Style's mission is to walk around campus at the University of Regensburg and take photos of stylish students. This week, her mission also includes celebrating her birthday: Pia turned 24 the day before yeserday. :)

Follow the jump below to congratulate her and find out about upcoming trips to unis in foreign countries, the "fashion prison" also known as working world, and a couple of style blog recommendations...

Nov 27, 2010

Music journalist Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff has interviewed Emily Kokal of Warpaint. Among the topics discussed are spontaneity in composing, perpetual further development of existing songs, and what it means for rock music that most female musicians have started their career learning how to play the piano (-> Mavis Baton mentioned that in her book How Women Become Musicians).

Nov 22, 2010

Design Sponge has announced the winners of the Design Your Own Alphabet contest I posted about at the end of October. My personal favorite, the hand drawn font called Peacock above, won a $100 bonus prize.

Nov 21, 2010

Picking up the video I posted a couple of days ago, Helga of the German team-blog Mädchenmannschaft wondered about Wikipedia's gender balance. Her article was entitled "Das Frauenproblem der Wikipedia", or, in English, "Wikipedia's issues with women". Helga's findings for Germany resembled Rachel McCarthy James' findings for the UK: Wikipedia pretty much ignores women on the main page. On average, only one of about ten articles featured on Wikipedia's starting page mentions a woman. On some days, there is no word of any women at all on the front page. As Rachel put it:

To look at Wikipedia's main page on August 24, 2010, you would think that men made and did everything, and women had nothing to do with anything.

Since most authors on Wikipedia are male - according to Rachel only 13% of Wikipedians are women - this might not be very surprising. However, both Rachel and Helga argue that Wikipedia needs to a) promote more articles written by women to the main page, b) highlight new articles about women on the main page, and c) explicitly invite more female editors to participate in the project. Writes Helga:

Are women irrelevant? Do we not know by now that, often enough, history has been made by men who simply ignored female accomplishments, or, even worse, ascribed them to men? History seems to repeat itself on Wikipedia.

Nov 19, 2010

Has Western philosophy been built on the exclusion of certain groups of people?

The University of Kentucky would like to know! The topic may be addressed historically and/ or systematically, and the winning essay will receive a prize of $1000. Please find more information and detailed submission guidelines here.

Nov 18, 2010

Having lived in South East Asia for a year myself, I took special interest in historian Cathrin Karras' blog. With a focus on Vietnam, she covers anything from politics and popular culture to traditional blood soup dishes.

Follow the jump below for one of my favorite interviews so far, and to get to know yet another female blogger who has had to put up with death threats because of her views...

Nov 17, 2010

Hugo Schwyzer analyses Paris Hilton's remark about being sexy, but not sexual, and explains why it is important to give young people "tools to navigate their way through the bewildering blitzkrieg of messages which they receive about sexuality". The task is, Schwyzer finds, to stand up for sexuality while standing against sexualization. Found at Jezebel via Mädchenblog.

Blica alerted her readers to the fact that teenage blogging wonder Tavi of Stylerookie will soon be editing her own magazine, modelled after American example Sassy of the early ninties. Cool, maybe someone should send her a copy of Missy Magazine, too? For inspiration only, like fashion bloggers would say.

Nov 14, 2010

Blogger and journalist Asmaa Alghoul from Gaza, whom I met at the Young Media Summit in Cairo, has received a death threat: Someone calling himself 'Masirek' has threatened to kill her in front of her son's eyes. Lina Ben Mhenni, who was also a participant of the summit, has written a solidarty post in French, where she rightly condemns Masirek's verbal attack. According to Egyptian blogger Tarek Amr, the threat was not prompted by any particular post, but by Asmaa's stances and points of view in general. Asmaa has been fighting against so-called honour killings and for the rights of Palestinian women.

Physical threats to bloggers, by the way, are not as rare as you might think. Even in Germany there have been cases of severe harassment, up to the involvement of Police - as has also been demanded in Asmaa's case. It is important to remember that threats, even if they aren't followed by action, are a) litigable and b) abuse, too. See this related post on verbal abuse for more information.

Last night I ran into two of the three members of Maria & The Mirrors in a Berlin washroom. In between "Entschuldigung" and hand soap, I asked them whether they had any acapella or unplugged clips I could use for my blog. Bewildering looks. "We have live clips?" It dawned on me that maybe their music wasn't for me - and, frankly, it wasn't at all - but the girls were real nice, and I liked this picture, so I wrote a post about them anyways... Industrial tribal beats, anyone?

Nov 9, 2010

The way that children are educated about abuse needs to change. The way that people involved in interventions, like police officers and crisis counselors, needs to change and these people need to be involved in helping people identify and name verbal abuse. Helping people articulate what is happening. We need to stop telling people that words can never hurt them.

Nov 8, 2010

I am honored to introduce to you today Saudi Arabian blogger Reem of Reemsite.com, whom I met at the Young Media Summit 2010 in Cairo. Reem usually blogs in Arabic, but in order to facilitate intercultural dialogue, she has been working on an English version of her blog, too. Want to know what life as a female Saudi Arabian blogger is like? Just follow the jump! Photo: Hardy Prothmann

Nov 4, 2010

Nicola Kuhrt is a freelance science journalist. On her blog Kuhrtgesagt, she keeps an eye on the pharmaceutical industry.

Follow the jump below to track Nicola's development from neighbourhood blogger to health care expert, and to find out more about a certain minister's member of staff who decided to engage in a discussion on her blog in a rather ungallant way...

Nov 3, 2010

"Oh, really? You can do that?" is the standard reply I am getting from fellow female bloggers whenever I mention my favorite RSS feed reader, Twitterfeed, or timed blog posts. Because I'd rather hear a hard-boiled "Yeah, I know, and even better is...", I have come up with a new posting series explaining some basic technical terms and tools of blogging called OH, REALLY?

Ever wondered what a VPN connection is? Or what a certain process really meant? Drop all time-consuming research, place your question in the comment section - or anonymously via email - and watch this space... I promise I'll try my best. ;-)

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